HAMMER
DILSHOD NAZAROV is pretty much Mr Tajikistan Athletics. The 34-year-old is the president of the national athletics governing body, carried the flag at the opening ceremony and then won his nation’s first medal of the 2016 Olympics in any sport and Tajikistan’s first gold medal, again across all sports, since it became independent following the disintegration of the Soviet Union.
“The reaction back home is going to be hard to imagine,” he said, after throwing 78.68m for gold. “I’ve got hundreds, maybe thousands of ‘likes’ on my Facebook account, so I think the country were behind me here.”